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User blog:Gorvar/Gorvar reviews: The Last Airbender.
img http://watchoutmovies.com/images/The_Last_Airbender_Movie.jpg[/img] Hello everyone. Today we’re going to talk about why some animated shows are best not done in real life. Mostly it’s because the characters are very hard to portray in a life setting, or the setting itself is very hard to recreate in our world. Or mostly it’s because seeing people fly around looks fucking stupid. Now let’s talk about ‘The Last Airbender’. This movie...I had to admit I had no hope for this one at all, not even the trailer seemed to encourage me. It’s dumb, annoying, doesn’t stick to the source material and just flat out sucks. Kinda like Scrappy Doo, only the pain sticks around longer. For those who haven’t seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, it’s a show which takes place in a fictional world where some people can bend the four elements. Earth, Fire, Water and Air. These benders can only bend one type of element, except the Avatar who can bend all four so he or she can maintain the balance of the world and the spirits. The characters are awesome, the relationships feel real, the plot is just plain epic and despite the main cast being mostly 15-16 year olds you can relate to them. In short just go see the show in all it’s 3 season glory and stay the fuck away from this movie. For those who would like to know WHY this sucks, let’s dive right in. Number 1: Actors The actors just plain suck in this movie except for Dev Patel and Shaun Toub who give in rather okay work, but nothing to save this movie from. They do not put any emotion in their lines, their fighting scenes make the ones from AvP look like fucking masterpieces in comparison (and you all know I hate that film) and they look nothing like the characters from the show! imghttp://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m93/Silentman101/Last_airbender_cast.jpg[/img] I especially hate Sokka in this film, but I’ll talk about it later. Maybe it’s a tad harsh for me to go at it on these kids, after all for most of them this is their first movie, they’ve been thrown into a big million dollar movie, they were not prepared. This also adds to my opinion that some shows cant be put in real life. You cant ask 12 year olds to act way above their league, Finding one let alone 3 Dakota Fanning’s would be impossible. Voice acting on the other hand is a lot easier that way, your actors don’t have to resemble your characters but can provide the excellent voice. Anyways the acting does still suck and really drag the movie under. Number 2: The Plot. The plot from this film is what could be best described as the botched plotline of Season I heard from a drunken man who saw snippets of the show on tv while he was beating his children. In short, the Fire Nation wants to take over the world, of course, and that’s why the entire world has gone to shit. People die, shit blows up, things burn....you know, the war backdrop where every other fantasy film takes place in. And that is the problem in this movie, it all feels to rehashed because again this film is the life adaption from a animated show, we know what’s going on, there was no need to film it. If they wanted to go original and actually made a prequel to the show in life action form, It probably wouldn’t been better. Well ok I tell a lie there, it would still have sucked ass, but still they wouldn’t have butchered the show. The movie is very clumsy in executing the plot, as in the backgrounds of the characters and the climax had to be explained several times in the film. In one scene Zuko asked some kid what he knew about him just so we could be told what we already knew from a previous scene earlier on in the film. Also it doesn’t help this film feels rushed. Katara and Sokka only know Aang for let’s say a day when Zuko shows up to take him away, they have no real reason to go after him, especially since there was no ‘bonding’ montage or anything to suggest they became friends. It’s even only after he got rescued by the siblings he actually tells them his name! How the fuck can you care about someone whom you’ve only known for like an hour and never really talked to, to risk everything to save him. In the show it made sense because Aang and Katara became friends really fast and actually had a small adventure together which alerted Zuko to the Avatar’s survival. In the 20 minute mark Aang discovers the skeletons of his Airbender Nomad people (Piles of skeletons in a graphic way, only in a kid’s movie!) which triggers him into the Avatar state. The Avatar state is a subconscious trigger which powers up a Avatar and grants him all the power and the skill of his or her previous incarnations which only happens when the Avatar is either upset or during a life threatening situation, though it could be triggered at will if trained. In the show only Katara was able to snap Aang out of these traumatic episodes because of the bound they share. The bound is something I like to talk about because in the Avatar State the Avatar is a force of destruction which can level entire cities or rout armies, but the relationship (which results into love near the end of the show) between the two is so strong Katara just walks through the vortex of destruction and holds Aang in her arms which immediately calms him down. To see it in this film without having said bound, let alone a hug, is like watching a half hearted attempt by fans who try to re-enact this scene. Wait, why am I talking about this, I have to talk about the plot! So the gang decide to go north because Aang needs to learn the three other elements to defeat the Fire Nation and the perfect master to learn water bending from lives on the North Pole. In that time the crew connect I guess and help people in rebelling against the Fire Nation. It sounds exciting but it isn’t, at least in this film. I’ll talk about the action later. So they get to the North Pole where they find the entire Northern Water Tribe, who life in a city ironically, and they stay there until the Fire Nation attacks. It’s around this part the film TRIES to be epic and start throwing epic music our way and the preparations for war, but really at this point you have stopped giving two shits, let alone a damn, about this movie. Sokka falls in love with the Princess, for no real reason whatsoever, but she dies 20 minutes later when she has to sacrifice herself to save the planet because the Fire Nation attacked fish that can CONTROL THE MOON AND THE TIDES! Those are some fucking hardcore fish dude, give me some! Anyways The good guys win, Prince Zuko keeps going after the Avatar and the Fire Lord Ozai sends his daughter after both Aang and Zuko to eliminate them. Thus setting up for a sequel. ... Whoopty shit. Number 3: The characters They all suck! At best you can call them all Mary Sues, because they have no flaws whatsoever. In the show Aang, despite his overall kindness, has quite a few flaws. In one episode he came across a messenger from Katara and Sokka’s father who had gone off to fight in the war, who had a map where it said where he was. Aang hide that map because he didn’t want to lose his friends who would go on their own to find their father. Same goes with Sokka. In the show he’s the sarcastic funny comic relief guy and this makes him a awesome character later on in the series when the story becomes darker and you need the humor he has to make it more bearable or relieve stress from the other group members. But he also has flaws. In the show, and film, he falls in love with the Princess but he already had a side thing going on with a other girl, so he was in fact cheating on her with Yue. Also in the show Yue was supposed to be married off to someone but Sokka didn’t care and went for that romance, despite the consequences. Even Katara’s Waterbending Master Pakku ( and later on her step grandfather) who’s only been in a few episodes had way more personality then in the film. In the show he declined teaching Katara waterbending because she was a girl and he believed women should only use waterbending to heal rather then kick ass. It was only after a whole episode and a awesome duel she could convince him. So yeh, the show does show that these are real people with good sides and bad ones, making us feel and care for them, or despise them if they let their own faults consume them whole. In this movie they don’t have any flaws! Aang doesn’t have to face any kind of moral dilemma while Sokka’s romance with Yue goes unhindered because he doesn’t have a girlfriend and she doesn’t have to be married. And In this movie Katara was thrown in the same class as Aang, with no objections whatsoever. You could say they left these bits out to make the movie shorter, since if we put in all the ‘little’ things it would be three hours. But yes! Yes the movie has to be three hours if you want to do it right! Those little bits are what I call character development, it gives us the feeling these characters are growing, facing their inner demons and either overcome them or fail. If you have a story about a band of heroes travelling to save the world, you need fucking character development. Even Final fucking Fantasy VIII had character development! The only characters that seem to have been doing ok were Zuko and Iroh and that’s because I think M. Night Shyamalan didn’t spend enough time on them to fuck them up. He claims to have seen the show, but how can he if he screwed up everything? I’ve seen fucking fanfiction better then this! How can you fuck up the unfuckible? What unfuckible is not a word, well it should be. Also Monk Gyatso is black....Go figure. Ghaargh...next topic... Number 4: Action The action is dull and mediocre as are the fighting styles. Each fighting scene feels more like a Tai Chi experience then a true full combat action scene. They keep throwing shit at each other while the other guys summon up a shit shield to counter. It also doesn’t help it’s all done in fucking bullet time. I don’t know who they are ripping off from, The Matrix or 300, at least in those films we cared about the characters or cheered for their bad ass ness. There is no bad ass-ness in this film, even the giant tidal wave in the end of the film sucks! You know why? Because ‘The avatar is not allowed to hurt anyone’. Everyone I know calls bullshit on that one. Avatars are supposed to maintain the balance, if there is a factor which throws the balance off, it has to be dealt with or eliminated. The reason why Aang doesn’t kill is because he is a Air Nomad/Monk who value life, but the previous avatars have killed in the past if they needed to. Hell Avatar Kioshi from two life times ago flat out killed a king because he tried to destroy her village. So the big tidal wave at the end was just a threat to back the Fire Nation off from attacking the Northern water tribe. Gee, I recall in the show that Aang turned into a friggin’ Godzilla like monster and just went apeshit on the Fire Nation Navy, drowning bitches left and right and sinking nearly all the enemy ships. See, that would’ve been fucking bad ass! What I also hated in this film is the Firebenders needing a external fire source to bend fire. In the show they could shoot fire from their limbs and even from their mouth like a dragon, whom according to legend they learned fire bending from. Why does it have to be external here? Couldn’t we just have stuck with them just shooting fireballs from their hands? If it is external, wouldn’t it be clumsy to carry fire lanterns or braziers everywhere? Not really since the Water tribe was dumb enough to leave their lanterns on when the Fire Nation attacked. What about Iroh? In the movie he can summon fire from out of thin air, and Zuko was able to melt his way through ice when he was almost drowning. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. The stupidity even hurts the brain so much it’s like somebody is lobotomizing my brain while I watch this film. Conclusion: Stay the fuck away from this film, it’s not even riftrax worthy or something to laugh at with friends. If you want to see awesome animated glory however go watch the show, you’ll love it. Category:Blog posts